Emmanuel

Levinas:
Totality and Infinity
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Life zand Career
1905: Born January 12 in Kaunas (Kovno, in Russian), Lithuania.
Lithuania is a part of pre-Revolutionary Russia and the surrounding
culture ‘tolerates’ Jews. He is the eldest child in a middle class family
and has two brothers, Boris and Aminadab.

1914: In the wake of the War, Levinas’ family emigrates to Karkhov, in

the Ukraine. The family returns to Lithuania in 1920, two years after
the country obtains independence from the Revolutionary government.

1923: Goes to study philosophy in Strasbourg (France). Levinas

studies philosophy with Maurice Pradines, psychology with Charles
Blondel, and sociology with Maurice Halbwachs.
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1928–29: Levinas travels to Freiburg (Germany) to study with

Edmund Husserl.

1930: Publishes his thesis in French, (La théorie de l’intuition dans

la phénoménologie de Husserl) The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s
Phenomenology.

1934: Levinas publishes a philosophical analysis of “Hitlerism”

1961: Publishes his doctorate (ès Lettres), (Totalité et infini: essai

sur l’extériorité) Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority.
 TOTALITY & INFINITY: AN ESSAY OF
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EXTERIORITY
SECTION 1: The Same and The Other SECTION 3: Exteriority and the Face

a) Metaphysics and Transcendence a) Sensibility and the Face

b) Separation and Discourse b) Ethics and the Face

c) Truth and Justice c) The Ethical Relation and Time

d) Separation and the Absolute SECTION 4: Beyond the Face

SECTION 2: Interiority and Economy a) The Ambiguity of Love

a) Separation as Life b) Phenomenology of Eros

b) Enjoyment and Representation c) Fecundity

c) I and Dependence d) Subjectivity in Eros

d) The Dwelling e) Transcendence and Fecundity

e) The World of Phenomena and Expression f) Filiality and Fraternity

g) The infinity of Time

TOTALITY & INFINITY: THE CONCEPT BEHIND
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§ Levinas explains that exteriority is how the finite individual

transcends being merged into infinity.

§ Exteriority is produced by interiority.

§ The separation of the self from the Other is a form of non-

participation by the self in the being of the Other.
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§ The self must be separated from the Other in order to have

the idea of infinity.

§ Levinas says that the idea of infinity is not a representation

of infinity.

§ The production of infinity cannot be separated from the idea

of infinity.

§ To have the idea of infinity is to be aware of the infinity of the

Other.
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§ The Other is absolutely other than the same. The Other is

everything other than the self.

§ Levinas says that the idea of infinity requires the separation of

the same from the Other.

§ The idea of infinity is moral in that it is an idea of what the finite

being lacks in relation to infinity.

§ Exteriority is a form of subjectivity, but is not a selfish protest

against totality. Subjectivity is a welcoming of the Other.
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§ Levinas distinguishes between the idea of totality and the idea

of infinity.

§ Multiple beings can exist in a totality, but Being itself is exterior

to totality.

§ The face of the Other overflows the idea which the self has of
the Other.

§ The face of the Other is the way in which the Other is revealed
to the self. The face of the Other is the exteriority of its Being.
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§ Levinas explains that the face of the Other speaks to the self.

§ Truth is a modality of the relation between the same and the

other.

§ Levinas admits that the assertion that a separated being

derives its being from itself is a form of atheism.
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“Let the other speaks as other is a

kind of respect of to the otherness of
the other.”
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OPINIONS/COMMENTS
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